In the past 18 months liquidity concerns have gone from the bottom of most executive worry lists to the very top. "Sometimes it's all they want to talk about," says Elyse Weiner, Managing Director and Global Head of Liquidity and Investments, Treasury and Trade Solutions, at Citi. "When something becomes a scare resource, it becomes very valuable."
The markets' intense focus on liquidity has played directly to the strength of Weiner and her team, which tailors solutions to each customer. "Every solution is a study in innovation in itself," she says. And with her services in such demand, her unit has posted some very impressive numbers. Under her leadership, GL&I produced three-year compounded annual revenue growth of 34 percent. What's more, through June of this year, year-over-year revenues increased 41 percent with year-over-year net income up 51 percent.
Weiner's direct supervisor, Francesco Vanni d'Archirafi, the global head of treasury and trade solutions, says that in the three-plus years Weiner has been in her post, she has "distinguished herself by building a business starting with a weak functional unit and turning it into...one of the jewels in our franchise."
For Weiner banking is actually a second career; the first was a public school teacher in some of the rougher neighborhoods in New York City. Facing poor working conditions, a high frustration level, and threats of bodily harm, she began to wonder "is this is really what I want to be doing." Her proclivity for her subject, math, led her to consider a career in finance, eventually leading to an MBA from Adelphi University and a position at Chase Manhattan Bank in 1984, where she remained until 1997. The rest, as they say, is history.
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